My dwarf umbrella tree Schleffie has its flower stalk fully expanding and is now in bloom. No flower petals and I haven't noticed a scent, so maybe it was designed to be wind-pollinated. Neat!

A blessing Wednesday morning. Looked out the window and saw a cloudy sky, but as I headed to the bus stop, I was blessed with gaps to the west, which gave me views of the lunar eclipse! The moon was around 67% covered when I started walking, and 90% when I got on the bus. Since it took place near daybreak the total eclipse was hard to clearly see, but it brought back good memories of other lunar eclipses and was a real blessing to get to see any of it in the winter.

Flipping my work calendar to February and seeing a typo of the full moon brought me to the awareness that this is a special month! A month with no full moon at all can only happen on February and takes place about once every 19 years. And the side-effect of the adjacent months both having a 'blue' moon is also quite neat!

Despite it being single digits with a nasty wind chill Thursday, the sunlight motivated me to get back over to the ice palace so I could take some photos with the sunlight shining through it. There were some neat ice sculptures of dragons too (among others).

Friday at work brought gluttonous fun in the form of a department 'tailgate' party to celebrate Super Bowl weekend. I quite enjoyed that, as well as the fact that the Super Bowl crowds haven't caused trouble for my daily commute.

Best of all, just two weeks left to my 25th anniversary of first meeting t'DoL!

I guessed you would be interested in seeing it. It's not a very big one, but I think they wanted to do something because of all the Super Bowl visitors (who are getting quite an experience of Minnesota winter!).